A Chosen Sparrow

by Vera Caspary

  So far as I could understand, the possession of a soul brought nothing but suffering. As a Jew I lived in danger of eternal torment for a sin I had not committed. Because of this my parents had been harassed and chased from Vienna to Prague, my father had disappeared and my mother sent to prison. Now I was deprived of a good Sunday dinner and often during the week forced to eat only potatoes. Why? Naturally I asked questions. Frau Stompfer said that I must never complain or I would have to endure worse punishment since I was not a child distinguished as the daughter of a man who had died honorably in the service of our country, but held a ration card only because the softhearted Viennese loved little children so sincerely that they were willing to overlook my disgrace. I was constantly reminded that if I called attention to myself the authorities would not only take away my ration card but remove me from this comfortable home so that I would have no choice but to become one of those poor children who slept in the rubble, snatched food from lean cats and whose poor little bodies were found frozen in the Danube Canal.

  At school I was also denied privileges enjoyed by other children. Before Hitler, rabbis as well as priests had come to instill faith in little children. Nowadays there were no rabbis and the five Jewish children who attended our school were shut out of the classroom when the priest came. At first this wounded me deeply. Heaven had rejected the Jewish child. Golden gates were locked against me. To console myself I read books from the library. Heaven’s gates had closed but I found earthly paradise. Books and dreams; in time the hours which had been most desolate became the most precious, my emotional needs so fulfilled that each morning I looked forward to the priest’s arrival. On winter days I would sit on the steps reading and did not mind that I was bundled in a winter coat, knitted cap and muffler, that my nose ran while I turned the pages clumsily in mittens. Reading so greedily I learned fast and became a favorite with my teachers. This did not make me a favorite with my schoolmates who jeered and taunted, sometimes pinched and slapped the Jew child.

  The Stompfers resented the hours I was obliged to spend in school and were always sarcastic about my wasting time with homework. To read at all I had to sneak out of the house. I learned to fib with facility, to say I had been kept an extra hour in school. In summer I found hidden caves among the rubble of a destroyed factory, curled up with my story book, escaped the embarrassing trips to the shops with Frau Stompfer or the repetitious scrubbing and washing up of dirty dishes. It may have been mortal sin for me to taste pork, but it was evidently no sin for a Jewish girl to scrub out the greasy pots. Fortunately for me the Stompfers were not at all clean.

  Once on a school holiday Frau Stompfer made me come with her to the Naschmarkt. She carried the shopping bag, I followed with a small basket. Into the shopping bag went the purchases and into my basket the pilfered goods, a spool of thread, an onion, three cigarettes. When the lady who kept the cake stall ran after us to accuse Frau Stompfer of stealing a poppyseed Semml (“made with real butter,” the lady shouted) Frau Stompfer who had slipped the sweet into my basket insisted that the naughty child was the thief.

  The cake seller hit me across the face. I was outraged. Unusually bold for such a cowed and timid child, I screamed so loud that every stall was deserted. Customers and loungers gathered around us. “It’s not so, it’s a lie,” I shouted, “she stole it, she’s the thief, she’s always stealing things, everything in this basket.” I hurled the basket with all of its contents at Frau Stompfer’s head.

  A policeman stood there. He had seen and heard. At once Frau Stompfer became humble. “Herr Policeman,” she said, arching her meek glance at him, “please be merciful to this poor Jew child. A little savage, a prison child that we, my good husband and I, have taken into our home. We must be patient with her and teach her the ways of Christ.” Did she wink at the policeman? It would not have been beyond her. “Please, Herr Policeman, may we return the little nothings she has stolen?” She gave back the onion and the thread but in the excitement managed to make off with two cigarettes (the third had been stepped on) and the poppyseed cake which she ate as soon as the cop was out of sight.

  The police still scare me. To this day I will cross the street rather than pass close to a uniform. Yet in those dark postwar days the police were the least of a child’s enemies. “Frau Stompfer, you should not send a little girl out in the streets late at night,” a neighbor warned. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Who’d touch a snotty little Jew?”

  “There are people on the streets who’d cut a child’s throat for a pot of soup. Or worse.”

  Since it was a pot of soup or a bottle of cough medicine I had to bring Herr Stompfer at his night job, the blood would turn to ice in my veins. At the sight of a man’s silhouette I would leap into a shadowy doorway or run like an animal when I heard a footstep behind me. I do not know which I feared more, the attacker of little girls or the policeman who would take me away from my good foster parents and turn me loose to grub for food among the garbage cans.

  In long, repetitious conversation with his cronies, when he was out of work or drunk, Herr Stompfer uttered prophetic warnings. “The Jews’ll get all the money again, by hook or crook. They always do. Take it away from them and they’ll get it back every time.” I thought about this frequently. The little Jew of the Stompfer house would have loved to buy sweets or an ice once in a while, and wondered by what hook or crook she could get her hands on a few groschen.

  One saw few Jews on the streets of Vienna. Those who had returned from England and Denmark (even America) wore good clothes and short hair so that they could not be recognized as different from other well-dressed people, but there were the others, the pious few who had survived the concentration camps and been sent to Vienna to wait in the D.P. communities for visas to other countries. They were kept alive by funds from abroad, a fact which Frau Stompfer bitterly resented. “They live better than we do, and they’d slit your throat for fifty groschen.”

  Would they recognize me as one of their own and spare my throat if I met them on the dark street? The men were alien, strangers from an unknown world in broad-brimmed black hats, with long beards and curls hanging down over their black coats. In the prison I had known many sweet Jewish mothers, but no men except the cruel doctor who had recommended fasting to women sick with starvation; and perhaps the gentle dentist, although no one had ever said so. My father had been Jewish, but I could not associate the handsome musician (in his beautiful tailcoat and stiff white shirt) with these darkly clothed aliens whose appearance sent me scuttling into a vestibule or courtyard.

  In the daytime I walked about the city happily, learned to love the old streets, peeped through gates into courtyards and gardens. A book I took from the library told about the archdukes and princesses who had lived in these palaces with scores of liveried servants to bring them rich pastry and venison on plates of pure gold. In such neighborhoods I was never afraid. I became an archduchess, I slept under silk and goosedown quilts, I shared my finest cakes (made with real butter) with the poor. Everyone loved Leni.

  In our neighborhood it was quite different. The Favoriten section of the city was dim with the smoke of factories and the dirt of railroads. Our street was so old and accomplished as a slum that none of the inhabitants expected anything better. No improvements were anticipated in a building whose moldy walls and ancient stink were considered badges of honorable age. That there was no bathroom was never mentioned, never thought about; who needed a bathroom? Only a charity waif who had been introduced by American Army officers to the luxury of a hot bath and trained to the austerity of cold cleanliness by English, American and Swedish ladies who taught little savages to live like cultured foreigners. The stairwell had once been lighted by a peaked glass roof but this had accumulated so many years of dirt and grease that on the sunniest day one had to grope one’s way up the staircase. Yet everyone who lived in the building was considered fortunate because so much of the city had been destroyed when the Germans left that there wa
s not much else to be had.

  Life in the building was spicy with gossip. Everyone watched everyone else, commented, questioned, argued. I listened to the gossip almost as avidly as I read books from the library, perhaps learned as much about the way people live. Among the neighbors the Stompfers gave themselves airs, spoke grandly of a bombed-out apartment and lost treasures. Herr Stompfer never wearied of telling about his important job in a big store on Mariahilferstrasse, of his striped pants and black broadcloth coat (still treasured in naphthalene and worn for great occasions.) If we had not lost the war he would have become a director of the company. I believed every word until an unfriendly neighbor (who had accused Frau Stompfer of stealing the soap from under her skirt while she was scrubbing her floor) told me that Herr Stompfer had been no more than porter promoted to the job of clerk in the housewares department. (“He sold chamberpots until the store was taken from its Jew owners and the Jew employees fired or shot.”) The so-called director’s post had been the job of floorwalker, the striped trousers and a broadcloth coat taken from a Jew.

  “And where do you think he got the uniform he wears now? From a tailor on the Graben?” The neighbor laughed. The braided coat and cap Herr Stompfer wore at his job as doorman at a night club were, the neighbor confided, literally cut off the body of a dead man, the former doorman who had gone to work with pleurisy and pneumonia in order to support five children and a pregnant wife, and had died on the street under the club’s winking neon sign. “You can count on the Stompfers to be on hand when there’s anything to be got free, even when it has to be cut from a dead body.”

  On the few occasions when Frau Stompfer brought home new shoes for me (which she was obliged to provide and which were, of course, secondhand) I hoped they had not been taken from the feet of a dead girl. I never dared ask. The answer would have been a beating. All of my other clothes were cut down from Frau Stompfer’s or Mimi’s.

  How I admired Mimi Stompfer, a grown girl of nineteen as dazzling as any of the movie queens whose pictures were exhibited at the entrances to the theatres. I thought her hair was naturally as gold as it appeared when she “washed and treated” it, that her rubbed fur cape was a relic of the family’s vanished grandeur. “Ask her where she got her cat coat,” sniffed the unfriendly neighbor when she heard me praise Mimi’s wardrobe. I never dared ask this question either. Mimi worked at the night club where her father served as doorman. “A typical Viennese blonde,” said the foreign gentlemen and soldiers who enjoyed having a young hostess sit at their tables and guide their choice of wine. As she received a small commission on every bottle, you can be sure it was the best they could afford.

  In the small flat Mimi had her own bedroom. Her parents slept in the kitchen and I was put to bed on a mat which I rolled out on the floor of the corridor, covering myself from the drafts with all my clothes and a blanket sneaked out of the hospital after Frau Stompfer had her kidney stones taken out. (The kidney stones were famous, she said, so unique that the greatest of professors of medicine kept them as scientific specimens. Anyone who made application at the hospital could see Frau Stompfer’s stones. I often wished I were brave enough to apply as I thought the stones would be of a special color and brilliance, fitted into jeweled shrines like the bones of saints I had seen when a group of children was led by our teacher through a museum.)

  “Be careful,” Mimi would warn the friends she brought home from the night club, “don’t step on the kid.” She always raised her skirt daintily as she stepped over me. Some of these men were soldiers of the Allied Occupation. I listened for American accents and hoped that some warmhearted soldier would find me on the floor and give me a slab of chocolate. None ever did. In that dark passage I never saw the faces of Mimi’s friends; I heard them talk and felt their feet. And I also learned from Mimi’s night voice that a girl speaks in different tones to a man from whom she expects favors.

  I often practiced that wheedling tone which probably became part of my own range when I grew old enough to find it useful. From Mimi’s mother I learned many other tricks, how to roll my eyes and look down shyly at my worn shoes, how to induce tears when it was profitable. Not that I ever practiced these things in the Stompfer house. They thought they had a monopoly on self-pity and the rights of the humble. But on those Sundays when I was invited to the Mayrs’, humility and tears brought rewards of delightful petting and small gifts. Sometimes I would use small provocations so that I might say, “Oh, it is my fault, please,” sighing in imitation of Frau Stompfer, “forgive me.” The Mayr daughters were instructed to be generous to poor Leni and often ransacked their cupboards to find gifts which I could take away with me.

  Frau Stompfer was always waiting at the door after such visits, hoping that I had received a present that made the trip worth the bus fare. As though she, and not Herr Mayr, had paid the small sum! Vindictively jealous of the Mayr family, she would constantly abuse those “misers” and “musical snobs” and insinuate that they had committed secret crimes which they tried to conceal by their kindness. This always threw me into a fit of temper. I screamed defense of my friends, kicked and used all the nasty words I had learned in the Stompfer house. Such scenes always ended with a severe beating. For comfort I ran to Fritzl. The flavor of his worn wool jacket, of male perspiration and cheap tobacco come back when I recall my early rebellions. Fritzl was a neighbor and Frau Stompfer’s admirer. He gave me sips of his coffee (for which his lady love sometimes got real milk) and taught me to play the zither.

  Fritzl was a veteran with an artificial eye fitted at an army hospital during the last weeks of the war. It was not the right size nor color and thus gave him a fascinating one-sided look. One day the eye got lost and I helped hunt for it among the brushes and floor rags in the w.c. in the hall. As it lay on the worn linoleum it seemed to wink. I never told this to Fritzl who might have been offended if I had been disrespectful of his war wounds.

  Just as Herr Mayr had remarked on my true pitch, Fritzl talked about my natural talent for the zither. We often sang together. He had an enormous repertoire of cafe songs which we listened to endlessly. Sometimes the neighbors would join in the choruses, weaving their arms together in a great circle of Brüderschaft as at the Heurigen. None enjoyed these entertainments more than Herr Stompfer who sent out for beer if he could afford it or invited in neighbors who might be inspired by music and fellowship to pay for drinks. On such heavenly evenings I was treated with indulgence, given half a salt stick to eat and allowed a bit of beer as reward for my share in the entertainment. Sometimes I was allowed to play the zither while Fritzl took Frau Stompfer on his lap and her husband, disgracefully out of tune, shouted praise of Vienna, wine and the waltz.

  Frau Stompfer resented Fritzl’s praise of my voice, and one evening interrupted the music to ask, sarcastically, “If Leni sings so well, why can’t she earn some money for us?”

  “At her age?” asked Fritzl. “Who would hire her?”

  “People have grown very rich singing on the street,” she argued with authority. “And they will be generous with such a poor-looking girl.”

  I was not at all averse to the idea of singing for strangers. In the prison they had lifted me to a bench to sing for women in the barracks, and at school I was sometimes asked for a solo. I saw myself the center of an admiring crowd, “The Little Street Singer of Vienna,” like the heroine of a romantic story from the children’s shelves in the library.

  To perform on the public streets, Fritzl said, one must have a license. He did not know the cost of such a permit, but was sure there would be a fee demanded by the police. This dampened Frau Stompfer’s enthusiasm. For a few days the subject seemed forgotten. Then, with the instructions that I was not to let Fritzl know, Frau Stompfer told me that I was to sing on the street without a license.

  “And if a policeman catches me? Will I be put in jail?”

  “No, no, child. You’re too young. They would say I was responsible.”

  “Would they arrest
you?” I asked hopefully.

  “I’ll take the chance.”

  Another problem rose. I wished to look my best when I gave my street show which might attract the attention of a kind, rich man who would take me out of these sordid surroundings and adopt me as his daughter. Frau Stompfer agreed that there were sometimes advantages in cleanliness, but did not consider these as profitable as the grime of poverty. “You will look more pathetic if you are not clean.”

  “I will not sing dirty.”

  A hard hand smote my cheek. There were no more arguments. Frau Stompfer chose a busy corner where many shoppers and strollers waited at the curb for the cars to pass. It was a windy place and the chill attacked my ill-covered body. For the first time in my life I knew stage fright. Frau Stompfer prodded me. “Sing!” If a kind millionaire did not discover me, I would be badly beaten that night. So I sang, “I must go back to Griming again and have wine, wine, wine…” I sang earnestly although I had never been in that section of Vienna where every fourth or fifth house is hung with a pine branch to tell passersby that new wine is offered… “From there one looks straight into heaven with wine, wine, wine…”

  No one stopped to listen. Frau Stompfer who had stationed herself at a nearby shop window raised her fist. “Louder!” I went on: “Herr Gott did a very clever job creating a holiday after six days of work…” and only a beggar, shabbier than we, paused to listen. After the first chorus Frau Stompfer signaled me to follow. At another corner we tried again, had better luck as we were near a popular coffee house and the people coming out were in a good mood. “We should be grateful to Him,” I sang in a firmer voice as I caught the glint of a listener’s smile, “for wine, wine—” and the song ended there because I was breathless after a violent jab in the ribs. Frau Stompfer grabbed my hand and jerked me away. I looked back toward the friendly smile and above it saw the cap of a policeman.